CLASSICAL REVIEW

Gabriela Montero has garnered considerable attention in traditional classical venues, but her name-value among the general public skyrocketed on the basis of a single ensemble appearance on the steps of the nation's capitol in 2009.

It was then, at President Obama's inauguration, that the exceptionally gifted, Venezuela-born pianist joined Yo-Yo Ma, Itzhak Perlman and Anthony McGill to perform (well, mime, to be perfectly honest) a new piece John Williams composed for the occasion.

Since then, her career has taken off in all sorts of interesting directions, propelled in part by several recordings on the EMI label that have focused on her astonishing skills as an improviser on Baroque themes. Montero devoted the latter part of her downtown-Chicago recital debut, Friday night at the Harris Theater for Music and Dance, to sharing those skills with the audience, interactively.

But the former child prodigy also happens to be one of the foremost exponents of Latin-American piano music around, as she amply demonstrated in nine pieces by Cuban, Argentinian, Brazilian and Venezuelan composers, all drawn from her most recent album, "Solatino."

To four selections by Ernesto Lecuona (including his greatest hit, "Malaguena") she brought a bouncy subtlety of rhythm and a wide palette of colors that heightened the populist-folkloric flavor of these charming vignettes. Much the same could be said for her idiomatic panache in pieces by Alberto Ginastera, Ernesto Nazareth and Moises Moleiro.

The big work on her program, Ginastera's Piano Sonata No. 1 (1952), opens with a toccata-like Allegro marcato that could well be subtitled "Prokofiev Visits the Pampas." Montero dispatched it, and the succeeding three movements, with a scintillating virtuosity that was more than equal to the music's formidable technical demands.

Her performances of two Chopin Ballades, No. 1 in G minor and No. 4 in F minor, were rather ordinary by comparison, although she sailed through their pianistic difficulties with disarming ease.

Then came the part of the program Montero told her listeners she loves the most – making them part of the show.

She is among the very few classical musicians who have embraced improvisation. Despite a grand lineage going back at least as far as J.S. Bach, most of her colleagues have ceded the art form to jazz players.

Montero typically has audience members suggest tunes she then turns into free-form musical creations; so it was on Friday. Too bad there was such a babel of shouted suggestions that she recognized only a few. And nobody in the house seemed capable of carrying a tune, beyond croaking out a few tone-deaf bars. "That's horrible!" the pianist admonished the audience.

Nevertheless, she managed to turn the Chicago Bears fight song into a clever Bachian fantasy in which the tune disappeared amid yards of lacy Baroque figuration. The Beatles' "Yesterday" launched an attractive piece of faux Rachmaninov, complete with rich harmonies and throbbing lyricism. And who would have imagined Billy Joel's "Piano Man" done up as a Schubertian impromptu that eventually morphed into a jazzy Latin dance?

At the suggestion of several Venezuelan-flag-waving audience members, Montero turned a popular song from her native country into another Rachmaninov-style creation that could boast real shape, direction and intrinsic musical appeal. It was the best thing she did all evening, and the crowd lapped it up.